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In this article, I discuss cross-border egg provision by young South African women as a form of traveling biolabor that is critically about embodiment, and aspirations for mobility and cosmopolitanism. The frame of biolabor challenges the frames of altruism/commodification, and choice/coercion, and instead highlights the desires of egg providers, fundamental to the creation and maintenance of the global fertility market. When biolabor crosses borders as traveling biolabor, the analysis can focus on the specificities of inequalities embedded within such reproductive mobility. Traveling or mobility is often a privileged decision and connotes freedom and cultural capital. Yet, when applied to young white egg providers from South Africa, this traveling biolabor relies on a particular kind of biopolitics wherein the reproductive potential of ova/egg is fundamental in facilitating women’s cross-border mobility. I divide the findings sections into three key themes—“cosmopolitan competency,” “alternatives to maternity,” and “productive pain”—to argue that, on the one hand, from recruitment of traveling egg providers to their (self) management, this biolabor is built on the young women’s aspirations for cosmopolitanism. Traveling biolabor becomes a way to escape the normative expectations of their (primarily rural, conservative) families and the (Afrikaner) national project of the volksmoeder (mother of the nation). On the other hand, the pursuit of these aspirations is critically contingent on management successfully reframing the embodied pain of egg provision as well as the biolaborer’s own maternity. Laborers’ desires and management disciplining tactics converge to sustain the global fertility market.

Feminist analysts of women in global production have demonstrated that “good” labor is not found ready‐made. It is produced through the practices and rhetorics of the shop floor. In this ethnographic study of commercial surrogacy in a small clinic in western India, I argue that a good commercial surrogate, like a good laborer of global production, is not found ready‐made in India. She is produced, instead, in fertility clinics and surrogacy hostels. However, unlike women in factories who have to be constituted as the perfect worker of managers’ dreams, surrogates have to be constituted as the perfect mother‐worker subject. The surrogate in India is expected to be a disciplined contract worker who gives up the baby at the termination of the contract. But she is simultaneously urged to be a nurturing mother for the baby and a selfless mother who will not negotiate the payment received. When one’s mother identity is regulated and terminated by a contract, being a good mother often conflicts with being a good worker, which makes the mother‐worker identity a rather difficult one to produce. It requires a disciplinary project that works discursively, one that works through the materialization of discourses in the form of enclosures or surrogacy hostels. The production of this mother‐worker subject, however, does not go unchallenged. What we see instead is a continuum of resistance composed of discursive, individual, and collective actions that disrupt the production of a reified, unitary mother‐worker subject.

A recent report on migrant domestic work in Lebanon has cited psychological disorder among Lebanese “Madams” as the leading cause of violence against their migrant maids (Jureidini, 2011, www.kafa.org.lb/StudiesPublicationPDF/PRpdf38.pdf). This report typifies much of the existing scholarship on the experiences of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in the Middle East, where the focus is on employer–employee relationships, especially the abusive Arab “Madam.” In this paper, I argue that the portrayal of violations of MDW rights as abuse of one set of women by another is inherently problematic on several fronts. It privatizes the structural problem of workers’ and immigrant rights violations, delegates it to the household, and absolves the state of its responsibility. Moreover, the focus on abusive employers takes attention away from the root of the problem – the inherently exploitative system of migration and recruitment in the region, the sponsorship system. The sponsorship system not only creates conditions for much of these violations, but also systematically produces a new population of readily exploitable worker – the category of “illegal workers.” Oral histories and interviews with individual workers are employed to analyze the process by which illegal workers are “produced” in Lebanon. Finally, focus group discussions highlight critical policy recommendations made by the workers themselves, which address the systemic bases of their exploitation in Lebanon.

This article examines new nodes of migrants' desire to disrupt the heteronormative focus on married mothers in the literature on migration and gender and the reification of normative notions of both gender and sexuality. It demonstrates that in the presence of intense raced and gendered surveillance of both private and public spaces in Lebanon, migrant domestic workers (MDWs) use public “counter‐spaces” to forge intimate and sexual ties. It offers the frame of intimate counter‐spaces to understand the wider politics of resistance mobilized by MDWs in their everyday lives. Intimate counter‐spaces complicate debates around public/private, sacred/sexual, and confront state restrictions on migrant workers' sexuality. Despite their subversive power, such spaces can also reinforce the hypersexualization of the female migrant and highlight the paradoxical effects of everyday subversive practices used by migrant workers, not just in Middle East and Asia, but also across the world.

Surrogacy involves a woman who consents, before conception, to carry and deliver a child for individuals or couples unable to do so due to biological or medical limitations. This complex process encompasses medical, ethical, legal and financial considerations, resulting in varied legislation worldwide, with countries either prohibiting, restricting or legalising it. Recently, several nations have revised their legislation to encourage domestic surrogacy over international options, driven by ethical considerations and legal concerns. However, these revisions are still pending enactment. Despite the extensive literature addressing the legal, ethical, societal and medical challenges and benefits of surrogacy, no study has comprehensively analysed these factors together to fully capture the complexity of surrogacy implementation. This study aims to identify the key elements that currently facilitate the implementation of domestic surrogacy in the Netherlands and those essential elements needed for its successful continuation. A qualitative case study was conducted, employing both interviews and document analysis. The selection targeted individuals who were directly involved in or had an informed perspective on handling surrogacy in the Netherlands, including healthcare professionals, healthcare system leaders, policymakers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academics, lawyers and counsellors and 14 experts were purposively selected. The data were analysed both inductively and deductively, using the Context and Implementation of Complex Interventions (CICI) framework to assess the contextual factors influencing the implementation of domestic surrogacy. Four CICI domains were identified as most influential on the implementation of surrogacy: legal (allowance of altruistic gestational surrogacy but missing legal framework on legal parentage, advertisement and payment), political (political shifts and experts' influence, gatekeepers, intersectional collaborations), ethical (professionals' influence on patient's choice) and socio-cultural (donation culture and public opinion). The absence of a legal framework that secures legal parenthood, the limited availability of fertility services and the shortage of surrogate candidates represent key barriers to the implementation of domestic surrogacy in the Netherlands. Conversely, significant facilitators include extensive, well-organised collaboration between professionals and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), invited by the political system to share expert knowledge and support comprehensive legislation. In conclusion, despite the progress achieved, domestic surrogacy remains largely inaccessible to most infertile individuals and is yet to be fully adopted. Without legal reforms, the situation of surrogacy in the Netherlands is likely to remain unchanged, mirroring the experiences of other countries with pending surrogacy legislation.

Surrogacy involves a woman who consents, before conception, to carry and deliver a child for individuals or couples unable to do so due to biological or medical limitations. This complex process encompasses medical, ethical, legal and financial considerations, resulting in varied legislation worldwide, with countries either prohibiting, restricting or legalising it. Recently, several nations have revised their legislation to encourage domestic surrogacy over international options, driven by ethical considerations and legal concerns. However, these revisions are still pending enactment. Despite the extensive literature addressing the legal, ethical, societal and medical challenges and benefits of surrogacy, no study has comprehensively analysed these factors together to fully capture the complexity of surrogacy implementation. This study aims to identify the key elements that currently facilitate the implementation of domestic surrogacy in the Netherlands and those essential elements needed for its successful continuation. A qualitative case study was conducted, employing both interviews and document analysis. The selection targeted individuals who were directly involved in or had an informed perspective on handling surrogacy in the Netherlands, including healthcare professionals, healthcare system leaders, policymakers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academics, lawyers and counsellors and 14 experts were purposively selected. The data were analysed both inductively and deductively, using the Context and Implementation of Complex Interventions (CICI) framework to assess the contextual factors influencing the implementation of domestic surrogacy. Four CICI domains were identified as most influential on the implementation of surrogacy: legal (allowance of altruistic gestational surrogacy but missing legal framework on legal parentage, advertisement and payment), political (political shifts and experts' influence, gatekeepers, intersectional collaborations), ethical (professionals' influence on patient's choice) and socio-cultural (donation culture and public opinion). The absence of a legal framework that secures legal parenthood, the limited availability of fertility services and the shortage of surrogate candidates represent key barriers to the implementation of domestic surrogacy in the Netherlands. Conversely, significant facilitators include extensive, well-organised collaboration between professionals and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), invited by the political system to share expert knowledge and support comprehensive legislation. In conclusion, despite the progress achieved, domestic surrogacy remains largely inaccessible to most infertile individuals and is yet to be fully adopted. Without legal reforms, the situation of surrogacy in the Netherlands is likely to remain unchanged, mirroring the experiences of other countries with pending surrogacy legislation.

Across the world, universities are grappling with the colonial legacies that have shaped them. That struggle is especially vital in South Africa where the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall movements have catalysed decolonial activism and discourse against the legacy of apartheid in higher education. This collection asks what epistemic justice might look like in teaching, learning and research across multiple academic disciplines. Each author writes from first-hand experience of teaching at the University of Cape Town, an institution that was and remains a key site of complicity with and resistance against settler colonialism, apartheid, and their ongoing oppressions. The contributors trace power relations that are embedded in various teaching and learning spaces at UCT, asking critical questions about the kinds of subjects and objects of knowledge that are produced by their disciplines. Further, they explore new ideas, texts, and intellectual and pedagogical practices that can help academics interrogate, challenge and transform the dominant power relations in the South African academy. Collectively, these chapters work to imagine new subjects of knowledge in the postcolonial university through an ethic of epistemic justice. At a time when debates on decolonisation have gained urgency in academic, civic and public spaces, this interdisciplinary collection serves as a valuable archive documenting and reflecting on a turbulent period in South African higher education. It is an important resource for academics looking to grasp debates on decoloniality both in South Africa, and in university and teaching spaces further afield. Calling for concerted and collaborative work towards greater epistemic justice across diverse disciplines, the book puts forward a new vision of the postcolonial university as one that enables excellent teaching and learning, undertaken in a spirit of critical consciousness and reciprocity. At a time when debates on decolonisation have gained urgency in academic, civic and public spaces, this interdisciplinary collection by authors based at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, serves as a valuable archive documenting and reflecting on a turbulent period in South African higher education. It is an important resource for academics looking to grasp debates on decoloniality both in South Africa, and in university and teaching spaces further afield. Calling for concerted and collaborative work towards greater epistemic justice across diverse disciplines, the book puts forward a new vision of the postcolonial university as one that enables excellent teaching and learning, undertaken in a spirit of critical consciousness and reciprocity.

In this ethnography of Bangladeshi men living and working in South Africa, I draw on the intersection of three sets of literatures—masculinities studies, mobility studies, and the emerging body of work on migrant masculinities— to argue that migrant mobility shapes and is shaped by relational performances ofracialized masculinities. I analyze three particular moments of such \"mobile masculinities.\" The first is in the home country wherein migration is seen as a mandatory rite of passage into manhood. The second moment is in transit, where the relational masculinity of migrant men and \"traffickers\" (men who smuggle migrants across borders) is performed and (re)made. The final moment is in South Africa, wherein we observe two contrasting forms of masculinities: hyper masculinity (the idealization of violence and misogyny) and Ummah masculinity (the immersion in God and Islamic Ummah). Both kinds of masculinity in the final moment are attempts by the migrants to recuperate masculinity within a situation of extreme powerlessness. This article invokes the need for mobility research within gender studies, and an attention to a complex, processual construction of identities wherein gender, race, and other differences define the identities of migrants but also the discourses and narratives of masculinities.

In this study I highlight the spatial exclusions that migrant domestic workers (MDWs) experience in Lebanon. I argue that migrant domestic workers constantly challenge such spatial exclusions by using the exact spaces that they are excluded from as the bases for a meso-level of resistances—strategic acts that cannot be classified as either private and individual or as organized collective action. I highlight three kinds of such resistive activities: the strategic dyads forged across balconies by the most restricted live-in workers, the small collectives formed outside ethnic churches by other live-in workers, and much larger worker collectives (that often cross national borders) in rental apartments occupied by illegal freelancers and runaways. By analyzing these spaces as strategic instances of workers' collectives, I question the portrayal of MDWs in the Arab world as ultimate and defeated victims of abuse. But the continuum of resistive activities undertaken by MDWs in Lebanon also challenges the dichotomies often constructed between public (overt and organized) and private (individual and symbolic) forms of organization and resistances. This meso-level of resistance becomes particularly significant in a country like Lebanon, where MDWs are forbidden from forming or joining formal unions, and becomes critical for workers from many countries in Africa and South Asia who, unlike the larger Filipina community, have little access to formal support systems like consulates and embassies.